Netflix horror Time Cut and the weirdest movie backlash of the year

The new Netflix horror movie Time Cut fits squarely into a hugely-popular new genre for Hollywood — the time travel slasher. Ever since the 2017 movie Happy Death Day put its central character into a time loop surrounding her own murder, studios and streaming services have loved to mix horror tropes with what David Tennant would refer to as wibbly-wobbly, timey-wimey stuff.

This time around, the plot follows a girl who happens upon a time machine and accidentally travels back to 2003, where she has the chance to save her older sister from a knife-wielding killer. It's essentially an Avengers team-up of Netflix stars as well, bringing together Madison Bailey (Outer Banks), Antonia Gentry (Ginny & Georgia), and Griffin Gluck (American Vandal, Locke & Key).

As well as soaring to the top of the Netflix UK chart, Time Cut has also attracted its fair share of controversy. But the backlash has come from a bizarre point of view — people don't think the nostalgic version of 2003 works at all. When Netflix posted a clip of the film on X (formerly known as Twitter) using the caption "spend a day in 2003", the response was swift.

One user likened the clip to a "Shein ad", while another declared that Netflix should "fire whoever is in your styling department". Multiple users pointed out one moment in which a character appears to be holding a portable CD player like it's a smartphone, looking as if she's trying to use it to send a text message.

The styling was picked out for a lot of scorn, with many users noting that Ugg boots — worn by almost every character in the clip — were not as ubiquitous in 2003 as they would go on to become. In a telling comment, one user responded to the clip with a tweet declaring that "this looks like 2024 pretending to be 2003".

Read more: Time Cut viewers infuriated by ‘ridiculous’ ending to Netflix’s new No 1 film (The Independent, 2 min read)

This sort of backlash feels inevitable now that the 2000s have become fuel for nostalgia. Suddenly, cinematic nostalgia is aiming directly at a Very Online generation who grew up in an era of garish MySpace profiles and then spent their early 20s doing BuzzFeed quizzes about their schooldays. They are going to have strong opinions.

It's no surprise that the millennial contingent has made swift work of savaging the film for its period detail, especially based on the short clip posted by Netflix. However, director Hannah MacPherson has explained that she drew from her own experiences of the 2000s, telling Comic Book Resources: "I think it helped that I lived in the early 2000s, and was a young person trying to figure out who I was. I remember them quite well, and it was so fun to get to revisit the music, the fashion and even the electronics."

Read more: ‘Time Cut’ Review: Netflix’s ‘Back to the Future’-Style Slasher Is a Knockoff of a Knockoff (The Wrap, 6 min read)

She added: "There was the authenticity of the fact that I knew the 2000s. We had great department heads who did a bunch of research. We actually really cracked ourselves up, looking back at how many things have changed in 20 years."

Any movie about a specific time period will inevitably divide viewers a little. Although there are some unifying factors across a particular era, everyone will have experienced it differently. Across countries and even states, styles and trends will have been vastly different. So while MacPherson's 2003 might not be the one some viewers are familiar with, it was authentic to her.

Outside of its backlash from those looking for a more authentic version of their 2003, Time Cut has struggled to land with critics. On review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes, just 28% of reviews are listed as positive. Netflix won't mind that too much, though, as the film has proved very popular — even if people are a bit angry about the shoes.

Time Cut is streaming on Netflix now.